FedEx’s EV trial

Currently, the company has 43 EVs in service—in the U.S., you can find them in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. It isn’t the only company to use electric delivery vehicles; UPS has 29 and Frito-Lay (whose parent company is PepsiCo) has 176 electric trucks running potato chips and other goods to stores across the U.S. and Canada. All three companies are part of the Obama administration’s National Clean Fleets Partnership. But the ones at FedEx are special because they’re part of an important experiment.

At a distribution center in Chicago, FedEx is currently testing several different vehicles designed by different companies to find the most cost-efficient and reliable model for large-scale, national use. In New York, the question to be solved has to do with the city’s power grid.